This week I called my friend on the phone, both because of social-distancing and because they live in California, and admitted that I felt I had a selfish reason for being upset over the Coronavirus outbreak.  I told my friend I was so excited to celebrate Women’s Month (March). I had spent the last week of February drafting multiple blog posts to celebrate. My Google Drive is packed with several ¾-finished blog articles about women’s issues, women’s history, and awesome modern women who are doing awesome stuff right now!  But then the Coronavirus happened, and for all of March that was I could think about. It is all anyone can think about, understandably so. The novel Coronavirus (COVID-19) has gone from seemingly dismissable to all-consuming in a shockingly short amount of time. The month of March 2020 became the month of Coronavirus.

My friend, being the smarty-pants writer they are, suggested I embrace topicality and honor my writerly aspirations by publishing an article about women’s historical contributions to the field of medicine.  

This was such a brilliant idea that I immediately wrote it down, and then I wrote this post–and then I procrastinated on finishing it until the day after March 31st–oops.  I hope you enjoy this anyway.

Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler (1831 – 1895)

Medical Badass Cred: First African American Female Physician

As a child, Crumpler (born Rebecca Davis) grew up on Delaware and was close with her aunt who served their community as a health care provider for the ill.  Crumpler attended a prestigious private school in Massachusetts before settling in Charleston, MA in 1852 to work as a nurse. Eight years later, she applied to the New England Female Medical College and gained acceptance.  Crumpler gained higher education in chemistry, physiology, and diseases of women and children among other subjects. In 1864, Crumpler became the NEFMC’s first and only African American graduate (the college closed down in 1873).  This made her one of only 300 female physicians in the United States and the only female African American physician during the early 1860s. One year after graduation, Crumpler moved with her husband (Arthur Crumpler) to Richmond, Virginia where she practiced medicine for the Freedman’s Bureau, a government organization that helped over 4 million former slaves transition into freedom following the Civil War.  Crumpler endured sexism and racism from her colleagues, but persisted in her work. In Richmond, she found “…the proper field for real missionary work, and one that would present ample opportunities to become acquainted with the diseases of women and children.”  In 1883 Crumpler published a medical book, “A Book of Medical Discourses in Two Parts,” which elucidated illness treatment and prevention for infants, young children, and women.  This was the first medical text published by an African American.

Dr. Marylin Hughes Gaston, MD (1939 – )

Medical Badass Cred: First African American woman to direct a Public Health Service Bureau.

As a child, Gaston witnessed her mother faint due to complications from untreated cervical cancer. From that day, Gaston resolved to study medicine so she could help people like her mother who could not afford proper medical care.

Even though Gaston developed medical aspirations as a child, she was discouraged from pursuing medicine.  She graduated from the University of Miami with a degree in zoology in 1960, but later attended the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine with encouragement from a physician and mentor.  She was one of only six women in her cohort, and the only African American. While interning at Philadelphia General Hospital in 1964, Gaston became inspired to study sickle cell anemia. Sickle cell anemia is a genetic disease in which normally round blood cells develop a curved “sickle” shape, becoming clotted and causing tissue damage. Gaston secured funding to study sickle cell and established screening protocols for the disease in infants.  About 1,000 babies are born with sickle cell in the US alone. In 1975 she served as a medical expert in association with the National Institutes for Health.  Eventually, she became the deputy chief of the Sickle Cell Disease Branch. Gaston published a study showing the importance of Sickle Cell screening in infants and the value of penicillin for preventing infections in babies with Sickle Cell.  In 1990, Gaston became the first African American woman to head a bureau of public health, the Bureau of Primary Health Care in the U.S. Health Resources and Services Administration.

Dr. Patricia Bath (1942 – 2019)

Medical Badass Cred: So. Many. Medical. Firsts!

During her decades-long career as an ophthalmologist, Dr. Bath reached numerous ground-breaking milestones.  Her accomplishments include being:

• The first African American to complete a residency in ophthalmology (1973)
• the first female faculty member in the UCLA Jules Stein Eye Institute’s Department of Ophthalmology (1975)
• The first woman appointed chair of ophthalmology at a U.S. medical school, at the University of California, Los Angeles David Geffen School of Medicine in 1983.
• the first African-American female doctor to receive a patent for a medical invention (1988).
• And she was the first black female physician to receive a medical patent in 1988 for inventing the Laserphaco Probe, a device used in cataract surgery.

Finally, she is an honorary member of the UCLA Medical Center and holds a Howard University Pioneer in Academic Medicine award.

Dr. Alexa Canady (1950 – )

Medical Badass Cred: First female African American neurosurgeon

While initially discouraged from pursuing neurosurgery, Canady landed an internship at Yale-New Haven Hospital after graduating, cum laude, from the University of Michigan (1975).  The following year Canady gained acceptance to the neurosurgery residency program at the University of Minnesota, becoming the first female African American neurosurgery resident.  She became the first full-fledged African American neurosurgeon in 1981. Canady specialized in pediatric neurosurgery at the Children’s Hospital of Michigan, where she found that most parents trusted her expertise. She secretly assumed the parents thought, “She’s a black woman and a neurosurgeon, so she must know what she’s doing.”

Canady retired from the Children’s Hospital in 2001 and moved to Florida.  But when she discovered that no pediatric neurosurgeons lived in her area, she promptly left retirement to start a part-time practice at Pensacola’s Sacred Heart Hospital.

Right now, brave medical professionals of all genders and colors are on the front lines fighting the novel Coronavirus epidemic. Let’s all do what we can to support them. Stay home! And if you can, donate to the organizations I have linked to below:

• Donate to Johns Hopkins’ Medicine, or sew cloth face masks.
• Donate (perhaps monthly) to the World Health Organization (WHO)
• Donate to the Association of Black Women Physicians, a network of African American female health care professionals who work toward decreasing health disparity.